Foodborne Illness Acquired in the United States — Major Pathogens
Cited in 3 Likelier entries (3 risks, 0 decisions).
Used in 3 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
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- Statistic
31 major pathogens cause ~9.4 million illnesses, ~56,000 hospitalizations, and ~1,351 deaths per year in the US
“"We estimated that 31 pathogens acquired in the United States caused 9.4 million episodes of foodborne illness (90% credible interval [CrI] 6.6–12.7 million), 55,961 hospitalizations (90% CrI 39,534–75,741), and 1,351 deaths (90% CrI 712–2,268) each year."”
Calculation notes
This is the "known pathogens" half of Scallan 2011. The companion paper on unspecified agents adds another ~1,686 deaths/year, bringing the combined total to ~3,037 deaths/year — the figure CDC cites publicly as "~3,000 US deaths per year from foodborne illness." We use the combined total for the normalized lifetime calculation.
Independence note: Scallan et al. (2011a) is the companion paper to Scallan et al. (2011b); they partition foodborne illness into known-pathogen vs unspecified-agent components from the same CDC FoodNet and outbreak surveillance data.
Source date: 2011-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
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- Statistic
31 major pathogens cause ~9.4 million illnesses, ~56,000 hospitalizations, and ~1,351 deaths per year in the US; combined with unspecified agents, total ~48 million illnesses/year
“"We estimated that 31 pathogens acquired in the United States caused 9.4 million episodes of foodborne illness (90% credible interval [CrI] 6.6-12.7 million), 55,961 hospitalizations (90% CrI 39,534-75,741), and 1,351 deaths (90% CrI 712-2,268) each year."”
Calculation notes
Provides the denominator: 48 million total US foodborne illnesses per year (9.4 million from known pathogens + ~38.4 million from unspecified agents, per the companion Scallan et al. 2011b paper). The 15% cross-contamination share is applied to this total to yield the 7.2 million cases/year used in the native figure. Scallan's 90% credible interval on the known-pathogen total (6.6-12.7 million) contributes to the uncertainty band.
Independence note: Scallan et al. (2011a) is the foundational CDC burden estimate; the NORS contributing-factors analysis and the USDA kitchen study are methodologically downstream of the same surveillance infrastructure but measure different quantities.
Source date: 2011-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-19
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- Statistic
31 major pathogens cause ~9.4 million illnesses, ~55,961 hospitalizations, and ~1,351 deaths per year in the US
“"We estimated that 31 pathogens acquired in the United States caused 9.4 million episodes of foodborne illness (90% credible interval [CrI] 6.6–12.7 million), 55,961 hospitalizations (90% CrI 39,534–75,741), and 1,351 deaths (90% CrI 712–2,268) each year."”
Calculation notes
This is the known-pathogen half of Scallan 2011. Combined with the companion unspecified-agents paper (Scallan et al. 2011b), total hospitalizations reach ~127,839 per year (~56,000 + ~71,878). We use 128,000 as the round CDC-cited combined total. Applying 60% restaurant attribution: ~76,800 restaurant-linked hospitalizations/year. Divided by 58.5 billion restaurant meals/year (260M US adults × 225 meals/year): per-meal risk ≈ 1.31 × 10⁻⁶. Lifetime: 1 - (1 - 1.31e-6)^(13,275 meals over 59 years) ≈ 0.0173.
Source date: 2011-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-05-02
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